


The Moths and the Flames

by Georgiaboy



Category: Dorothy L Sayers/Harriet Vane
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-26
Updated: 2009-12-26
Packaged: 2017-10-05 06:54:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,109
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/38976
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Georgiaboy/pseuds/Georgiaboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Harriet hs a meeting with her publisher; the publisher and Lord Saint-George come to dinner</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Moths and the Flames

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Emeraldwoman](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Emeraldwoman/gifts).



Lady Peter Wimsey was just drawing on her gloves, about to leave the house. As Harriet Vane, detective novelist, she had an appointment this morning with her publisher.  
Things were still a bit unsettled, as the household – or what still remained of it – had been back in London only a few weeks, and most unsettling of all, Peter was still somewhere on the Continent working for the Foreign Office (and quite possibly, she reflected, still engaged in espionage).  
Meredith interrupted her to ask if she would take a telephone call. His voice, so like that of his brother Bunter, startled her, as she was deep in thought about her next novel. 'It's Lady Mary Parker, my lady.'  
'I'll take it, then.'   
Mary and Charles were coming to dinner this evening, so it might be that some crisis had arisen.  
'Harriet, I'm so sorry, but Charles has been called somewhere up north about a murder. He's just leaving now. We shall have to cancel on you for this evening.'  
'Oh, Mary, that's a shame; Mrs. Trapp has managed some magic with the ration books and put together quite a good menu. We'll miss Charles, of course, but please, you come!'  
Walking along Piccadilly towards Shaftesbury Avenue she pondered possible dinner alternatives. In addition to the Parkers she had invited her mother-in-law, the Dowager Duchess and also Peter's nephew, Viscount Saint-George, not yet de-mobbed, but on leave from the RAF, and staying a few days with his grandmother in her London house. (He avoided going home to Denver as long as possible.)  
Henry Drummond-Taber, her publisher, greeted her rather distractedly, she thought. After a few pleasantries and some initial questions about the new book, she interrupted him. 'Something's quite obviously wrong, Henry. You're not paying the slightest attention.'  
'I'm sorry, Harriet, but I'm all befuddled this morning. I wouldn't ordinarily mention it, but you know us both. Cecily has left me, and gone back to her parents in the country. It's just happened and I've not yet told anyone.'  
'How dreadful! Had you seen this coming?'  
'Not really to see it coming, but we've never been happy together. Our marriage was pretty much an arranged match, you know. Old families with connections, that sort of thing. And we seemed to be pretty compatible at first, but everything just kept going wrong. Growing apart rather than together, one might say. We'd become like two strangers under one roof.'  
'And now you're rattling around under that roof like a walnut in a birdcage. Look here, this won't solve anything, but it will give you a break. Come to dinner this evening.'  
'Harriet, I couldn't possibly impose on you like that.'  
'Certainly you can, and it's not an imposition. It's just a small party of family, all of whom you know, I think. It was really planned so we could have a little time with Saint-George while he's on leave. My mother-in-law is coming – Saint-George is staying with her – and Charles and Mary, except now Charles has been called away. So you can take his place. Mrs. Trapp has got the menu planned and all the rationing red tape solved.'  
'I really don't think I should.'  
'Don't think; just come! Seven o'clock. And we'll talk about the book in a few days.'  
With Bunter, that pillar of propriety, away with Peter, and her maid Mango, even more an upholder of 'the right way' still at her War Office job, Harriet felt sufficiently at ease to ask Meredith to set a less formal table in the music room. Bunter might have been nonplussed and Mango would have been scandalized, but Meredith was less difficult. 'Very good, my lady' was his only reaction, and not even a lifted eyebrow.  
Now, lifting a glass of sherry before the fire in the library, Harriet was very glad she had gone ahead with this modest party. Too many women were left alone during wartime – one could only hibernate so long – and could not wait on their menfolk indefinitely. And she was glad Henry Drummond-Taber had agreed to come along, he wasn't much of a clubman, and shouldn't be drooping alone at home, and his presence perhaps made it seem less of a 'hen party' to Jerry.  
The Viscount Saint-George, who mostly went by Captain Jerry Wimsey these days, was enjoying himself. Although the United Services Club was satisfactory for an occasional drop-in, he found it wearying now that the tensions of combat were lessened, and he certainly had no desire to re-live past campaigns, as so many of his RAF fellows were wont to do. He got along well enough with his Aunt Mary, and he adored both his grandmother and his Aunt Harriet, but he seemed drawn to Drummond-Taber in some magnetic way.  
'I'm a little fuzzy on the stud-book these days, but, if I may ask, aren't you part of the Shropshire clan?'  
'Well, yes, actually I am. I'm the second son of the Earl of Shrewsbury. My older brother is an Army captain, but my job at the publishers was deemed 'critical to national defense,' if you can believe it, just because we print all those services training manuals. So I've been left here in London for the duration, except when the whole office was evacuated to Oxford.'  
The mention of Oxford brought other associations to mind for Captain Wimsey, who said 'I was part of an informal club when I was up. There were a bunch of us who would sneak away to Shropshire whenever the academic atmosphere became more than we could bear. Because we were most of us being tutored by Housman, we of course called ourselves 'The Shropshire Lads'.' His face turned somber. 'I'm afraid that most of those lads will not be with us when, and if, we ever reconvene.'  
Drummond-Taber, touched by his words and expression, quoted softly

'Ere the wholesome flesh decay,   
And the willing nerve be numb,   
And the lips lack breath to say,   
'No, my lad, I cannot come.'   
Harriet, watching from the other side of the fireplace, noted the quick exaltation in Saint-George's face and the catch in his breath. 'So,' she mused, 'I've gotten something right after all.' From her long-past experience with the Bohemian life of poets and artists, she easily recognized the sudden attraction between the two men, each a moth to the other's flame. 'I always thought that all those adoring girls in his Oxford days were no more than dust to blow in his mother's eyes.'  
If any word of this attachment got back to the Duchess there would be a colossal explosion, but at least Henry was of impeccable lineage.

**Author's Note:**

> This event occurs near the end of World War II (after V-E Day), and includes characters which first appeared in the deuterocanonical 'Thrones, Dominations,' specifically Meredith the butler, Mrs. Trapp the housekeeper, Mango the maid and, most important, The Honourable Henry Drummond-Taber the publisher. I have named his wife, only mentioned in passing in 'T,D'. Other background comes from Jill Paton Walsh's 'Presumption of Death.' My most egregious presumption is to have placed the poet A.E. Housman at Oxford rather than at Cambridge, though the time period is correct. (Oxonians and Cantabrigians please forgive!)


End file.
